Dàfódǐng rúlái fàngguāng xīdátā bōdáluō tuóluóní kānzhù 大佛頂如來放光悉怛他鉢怛囉陀羅尼勘註
Philological Annotations to the Tathāgata-Coronal Light-Emitting Sitātapatra Dhāraṇī (Jp. Daibutchō nyorai hōkō shittata hattara darani kanchū) by 明覺 (Myōkaku, 撰)
About the work
A one-fascicle Japanese Siddham 悉曇 philological commentary on the Sitātapatra dhāraṇī — the so-called Dàfódǐng 大佛頂 (“Great Buddha-Coronal”) mantra of Amoghavajra (KR6j0116, T19n0944A) — composed by Myōkaku 明覺 (明覺, 1056–after 1106), the foremost Japanese Siddham scholar of the late 11th century. The work is one of the two principal Heian-period commentaries on the dhāraṇī (alongside the earlier 注大佛頂眞言 of 南忠, KR6j0182, 847 CE).
Prefaces
The work has no formal author’s preface; it opens directly with phrase-by-phrase glosses of the dhāraṇī’s title (“Tathāgata-coronal-knot — white-canopied — none-can-equal — extremely-subduing — total-retention”), each rendered with the corresponding Sanskrit syllabic form alongside the Chinese semantic gloss. The closing colophon, however, gives an unusually rich textual-transmission record:
- Original colophon by Myōkaku himself: “On the 10th day of the 7th month of Kahō 3 [1096 CE], the recluse of Kaga 賀州隱者 Myōkaku, to the best of his ability, has finished annotating it.”
- Kamakura transcript colophon: “On the 10th day of the 10th month of Bunji 5, year-cycle Jǐyǒu [1189 CE], copied at the Zen-window of Kamakura. Recorded by the monk 性我 Xìngwǒ / Shōga 釋性我.”
- Edo transcript colophon: “On the 27th day of the 9th month of Enpō 2 [1674 CE], copied from the daibakko manuscript of Kōzan-ji 高山寺. — The aged hermit Kenshō, 78 years old, has applied the dosha kaji of this temple in offering.”
Abstract
The Kānzhù (Jp. kanchū) is Myōkaku’s mature philological treatment of the Sitātapatra dhāraṇī, designed as a working scholar’s apparatus for restoring the underlying Sanskrit text from Amoghavajra’s Chinese transliteration. Where his predecessor 南忠 (in KR6j0182, composed 847 CE under direct teacher-transmission from a recent Tang returnee) had access to a single received Sino-Indian recension, Myōkaku — working two and a half centuries later from a position of philological detachment — collates multiple manuscript witnesses and frequently records textual variants: the “Tang text” 唐本, an alternative “Thought-version” 思惟本 (apparently a recension transmitted from Wǔtiānzhú 五天竺 by 寶思惟 Bǎosīwéi / Manicintana or by his lineage), and the various forms found in Tang transliteration practice. He is also willing to flag passages where the various manuscript-witnesses disagree, sometimes writing “the various witnesses agree, but in some none, in others present” 凡此句衆本在無不定也.
The annotations themselves are dense and technical: each Chinese syllable is given its underlying Sanskrit value (often with phonological qualifiers — “twin-syllable” 二合, “extension” 引, “anusvāra-point” 空點), its semantic meaning in Chinese, and its rhetorical-grammatical place in the unfolding dhāraṇī sentence. Myōkaku’s method exemplifies the fully-developed Heian Siddham scholarship that would constitute the principal Japanese contribution to Sino-Indian Esoteric philology.
The text is dated by its own colophon to Kahō 3 = 1096 CE, when Myōkaku was approximately 40 years old. It is the later of his two Siddham-school dhāraṇī annotations, the other being the slightly earlier 大隨求陀羅尼勘註 (KR6j0372, composed 1092 CE).
The base manuscript used for the Taishō text is the Kōzan-ji 高山寺 archive copy transmitted via the 1189 Kamakura transcript of the monk 性我 Shōga and copied again in 1674 by Kenshō.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. (Myōkaku’s Siddham works are referenced in modern Japanese-language Sino-Indian philological studies — particularly within the Shittan-gaku 悉曇學 disciplinary tradition — but have not received dedicated Western-language treatment.)